Hook Hockey

Butler and Magee eye Year of the Dragon

Stephen Butler and Eugene Magee hope that Chinese astrology comes to bear this weekend and that this year is the EHL Year of the Dragon.

The Irish duo line out this weekend for the Braaschaat club in the semi-finals of European’s elite club competition aiming to be Belgium’s first ever winners of the competition.

Standing in their way initially is a date with EHL royalty, UHC Hamburg, for whom Moritz Furste (a two-time EHL MVP), Oliver Korn and Alexander Perdoni are hoping to end their current time with the club on a high before moving abroad.

But Dragons have confidence a plenty, having reached the final four with impressive wins in the earlier rounds, a 3-1 win over Reading at KO8 and a 2-0 result against Dinamo Elektrostral a round earlier.

Indeed, they have yet to be beaten in normal time in their two seasons in the competition having beaten Rotterdam 5-4 in the group stages in front of their famed D-side fans. Their run only came to an end last year in a dramatic penalty shoot-out against Reading but there is confidence a plenty.

They are also one of the few teams to get the better of UHC in the competition, beating the Hamburg side in a cracker 4-2 in the group phases last term (see video highlights below).

They will be gunning for a title, meanwhile, having missed out on the Belgian championship to the Waterloo Ducks in dramatic fashion as they lost the first of the three-game final only to come back with a 4-2 success. It left the third game to decide all and normal time still could not separate the sides, tying at 2-2, before Broccard got a wonder goal to win it.

No Belgian side has ever won Europe’s premier competition but the Dragons are hoping to go a step further than KHC Leuven did in 2009 (when they were also knocked out by UHC) where they would face either Amsterdam or Rotterdam.